Connectivism:Rethinking Curriculum, Knowledge,

& Learning

EDUCAUSESan Antonio

January 28, 2008George Siemens

Learning Technologies Centrewww.umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

Imposing a structural will on the future

Activity confined by structure

Welcome to complexity

Uncoupling cause-effect

Multiple factors interacting – Diversity and emergence

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

On revolutions and innovations

Thomas Kuhn: Conceptual

Freeman Dyson: Tool Driven

Hell is the place where nothing connects” (TS Eliot)

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

“More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections so as to be able to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways.”

(W. Cronon)

Connectivism

• Knowledge as networked

• Learning as connecting, creating

• Systemic impact: designing education to optimize the value of networks

Connectivist taxonomyAwareness and Receptivity

Connection Forming

Contribution and Involvement

Pattern Recognition & Meaning Making

Praxis

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

Emergent curriculum(Osberg & Biesta)

Curriculum: created,

co-created, re-created

Curriculum validation“There is an emerging Fifth Estate, enabled by the internet, providing checks and balances.”

(W. Dutton)

Open Education Resources

Content is commodity

Collective Intelligence: “knowledge embedded within societies or large groups of individuals”

Horizon Report 2008

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

Complexification

“Networks are the language of our times, but our institutions are not programmed to understand them”

(McCarthy, Miller, Skidmore)

What does it mean to know?

To know is to be connected

Participatory sense-making(De Jaegher & Di Paolo)

Network as filter

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

Learning

1. Overlay or Transformation?2. Drivers3. Connectivism4. Curriculum5. Knowledge6. Learning7. Teachers & Classrooms

Permeable walls

Global networks

What education beginning to look like?

• The in-the-class expert• Learners• External learners• External experts• Multi-faceted content and perspectives– In concept and media

• Diverse

Websites and Newsletters

www.elearnspace.orgwww.knowingknowledge.com

www.connectivism.cahttp://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wordpress/